


The Last Day

by SerialObsessor (ibelieveinturtles)



Series: It Could Become a Saga [11]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alien Technology, Gen, Groundhog Day, all the usual Torchwood shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 02:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7826833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ibelieveinturtles/pseuds/SerialObsessor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life isn’t meant to be repetitive</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Day

**Author's Note:**

> You must start your story with the following line. Where you go with it after that, is up to you!  
> "Whoops," said ________. "That wasn't meant to happen!"
> 
> This is the last TWWC I completed. I do have others, half written, but they'll probably never get finished. In fact, after looking at this again I'm not sure if there should have been more to it as well, but this is all I've got.

"Whoops!" exclaimed Jack. "That wasn't meant to happen!"

He backed quickly away from the table whilst sucking on his tingling fingers and warily eyeing off the small luminescent grey box that sat on the table in front of him. They had picked it up a few days ago in an abandoned warehouse, a small box slightly bigger than a Rubik’s cube, but with sides that were smooth and unmarked, and shimmered softly in the light. He had been trying to crack its secrets ever since.

“Is everything ok in here Jack?” Tosh stood in the doorway with a concerned look on her face. “I heard the noise and thought I’d better check and see if you needed any help.”

Jack looked up, removed his fingers from his mouth and waved them about in the air instead.

“Ow,” he muttered as he moved around the table towards her. “I’ve been trying to figure out what this thing is,” he indicated the cube on the table, “but I’m not having much luck. I was running an analysis with one of your scanners and I accidentally touched the damn thing and it bit me.”

Tosh smiled and tried not to laugh, “Bit you?” she asked.

Jack just looked at her. “Well, ok, so it didn’t bite me, but it certainly startled me! It made all the noise of an explosion, just without any of the actual exploding, and then it shot a beam of light right up through the roof. And now it’s all quiet and peaceful again, as if nothing ever happened.”

Tosh leaned over the cube, being very careful not to touch it and examined it closely.

“Did it have these markings on it before?” she asked curiously.

Jack looked up, startled. “What markings?” he asked as he strode back over to the table and leaned down closely.

“Careful Jack,” Tosh warned him as he came perilously close to the cube. “Look here, and here… some kind of writing maybe?”

Jack peered intently at the cube, studying the squiggly lines and shapes that seemed to have suddenly appeared from nowhere. “I have no idea,” he said quietly, “but I think we’d better find out.” He stood up, “Tosh, I want to you to take every kind of scan of this thing that you can, take pictures of those … writings… and let me know as soon as you find out anything!”

He continued to stare at the box… “I want to know everything about it…”

 

~x~x~

 

Ianto looked up as a shabby young man entered the tourist office. He was tall and skinny, wearing black jeans, a Metallica t-shirt that had seen better days, and a grimy flannel shirt underneath a relatively newer denim jacket. He headed straight for the desk with a determined expression on his face, and plopped himself down in the chair directly opposite Ianto.

“I think I’ve finally got it all figured out.” He declared in a strong voice as he put his feet up on the desk.

Ianto gave the feet a distasteful look, and then stared at the young man until he removed them. “Oh, sorry, I forgot you don’t like that.”

“Who are you and what have you finally figured out?” Ianto asked archly.

“What? Oh shit, yeah, I forget some days that you don’t remember any of this.” The young man replied as he sat up a bit straighter. “Ok, my name is Tomos, and thanks to Jack, your illustrious leader, I have been living Groundhog Day for longer than I could keep count of.”

Ianto blinked, but before he could reply Tomos continued.

“To cut a long story short, cos I’m gonna have to tell the whole thing downstairs anyway, I’ve been helping translate the wiggly bits on the little grey box down there and I think I’ve finally figured out how to fix this mess! So, ‘Take me to your leader!’” he finished with a flourish, and a sketchy half bow.

“I’m sorry,” Ianto replied, “Groundhog Day? Isn’t that a movie?”

“Yes,” Tomos replied, “about a time loop. Actually the concept has also been episodes on several television programmes, like the X-Files and Supernatural, just to name a couple, but _**I**_ am actually living it! And whereas on most of those tv shows there were two people sharing the experience, I’m doing it the original way… on my own… and I’m sick of it! So if you could please phone Jack and tell him there’s a weird bloke going on about a little grey box and wiggly lines in the office, we can get on with this.”

Ianto looked at Tomos for a long drawn out minute and then picked up the phone.

“Jack? Ianto. Look, do you know anything about a little grey box with wiggly lines… it’s just that I’ve got a young man in here who says he knows how to fix it.” Ianto paused for a moment. “Well he says he’s living Groundhog day. Ok, I’ll bring him down straight away then.”

He hung up the phone and pressed the button to open the doorway to the corridor. “Lets go then.” he said, and together they headed for the elevator.

 

~x~x~

 

Jack rubbed his forehead and sighed deeply. “OK, so tell me if I’ve got this right. This morning you were walking through the platz on your way to work when a beam of light shot up from the pavement, and went right through you, top to toe so to speak.”

“Well we know what that was.” Tosh interjected.

Tomos nodded, and waited patiently for Jack to go on.

“After freaking out for a little while you came to the decision that there was nothing wrong with and you went along your way; went to work, the pub, dinner, bed and then when you woke up the next day… it was this morning again?”

Tomos nodded, “In a nutshell.”

“And this has been going on for how long?” Tosh asked quietly from the other side of the table.

“I didn’t start counting for a while, and I went a bit nuts in the middle there, and spent several ‘weeks’ as drunk as I could get but… at least six months, probably a lot longer. I’ve been coming here almost every day for about 10 ‘weeks’ now. I just want my life back.”

“How long exactly did it take you to find us?” Gwen asked curiously.

He looked over at her and smiled. “Don’t worry, it wasn’t easy. On one of my drunk mornings, I was just hanging around the platz, watching people. I didn’t really know what else to do at the time, so I just zoned. Anyway, I was staring straight at the tower when he,’ nodding at Jack, ‘just appeared. Stepped straight into the crowd and walked across the platz. No one else seemed to notice, and then I saw him hop into your big black car and take off.”

Owen snickered, “It’s always the car isn’t it?”

Jack gave Owen a warning glance and asked Tomos to continue his story.

“I put it down as a drunk hallucination and didn’t think anything else of it for a few more days until I saw it happen again. I wasn’t quite as drunk that time, I’d started later.. so I walked over to the tower and walked around it for ages, trying to figure out where you’d come from. Couldn’t figure it out though, so the next day I came back sober to see if you’d appear again and the day after that I borrowed me Mam’s car and waited for you on the road. I don’t know what prompted me to do it, I guess some part of me knew instinctively that I was connected It took more than a week to follow you, I kept losing you on tight turns and then on the freeway… that car’s a lot faster than it looks!”

Owen grinned, “Yeah, it’s a real beast, not like those piddly little toy cars that are so popular these days.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” Tomos looked at Jack, “the Rift is about to drop a box full of … um… special toys into a house near the Bay area. If someone heads out there within the next 15 minutes you’ll be able to recover them before the local primary school kids do, and believe me, if the kids find them first, there’ll be a huge mess to clean up.”

“Toys?” said Owen suspiciously, “Toys are going to cause us problem? What, like Buzz and Woody or something?”

“Yes,” Tomos grinned momentarily. “Special toys.”

As the entire team stared at Tomos the Rift alarm went off. Tosh hurried over to the computer in the corner and checked it before turning back to the table in surprise.

“The Rift’s just monitored activity in the Bay area…”

Jack shook his head, “Owen, Gwen, go check it out.”

“But Jack…” Gwen began, but he cut her off, “Just do it please Gwen, take care of it.”  
  
”Come on Gwen, I want to get the Buzz and Woody before those snotty nosed little brats get to them.” Owen called behind him as he headed out the door.

“But how much trouble could a few toys cause?” Gwen stood in the doorway, pausing for a moment.

Tomos smiled… “Surprisingly, Owen’s Buzz and Woody comment is more apt than he knows at this point. Only more alien…” he winked and Gwen had a sudden inkling of what he meant. “Jack?” she queried.

“Go ahead Gwen, we’ll be fine. You be careful though, especially with Owen. Don’t let him pocket anything!”

Jack watched Owen and Gwen make their way down the stairs, gathering together their equipment as they niggled at each other, and eventually left through the main door. He turned back to Tomos, Tosh and Ianto.

“So, what happens next then?” he asked the young stranger who had barged his way into the Hub and completely changed the way each of them had viewed their day.

Tomos took a deep breath and continued his story.

“After following you for a few weeks I finally got brave enough to approach you. You were very understanding, took notes, checked out the computers, gave me a full medical and then we went to the pub. You bought me a drink, we all had a long chat and then you told me that you couldn’t find any evidence of a problem, I must have imagined it all, and that you’d given me a pill to make me forget everything.”

“Ahh.” Said Jack. “Let me guess, it didn’t work?”

Tomos shook his head, “I woke up the next morning and remembered everything. So I headed straight for the Hub and told my story all over again. Lets just say that it’s taken many, many weeks to get to this stage.” He paused for a moment, head bent and resting on his hands. He lifted his head back up, “Please, I just want to get on with my life.” He pleaded.

Jack sighed, “Ok then, tell us what to do.”

“Well, Toshiko needs to finish scanning the cube, so that we get all the information on the computer, and then I can help you finish translating the writing that’s on it. There were just a couple of things that we couldn’t figure out last time, but I think I know what they should be.” He looked down at his hands, “I hope I know what they should be.”

Jack looked over at Tosh who was still monitoring the Rift activity on the computer, “Ok then, let’s get on with this.”

 

~x~x~

 

Tomos looked on as Tosh set up the equipment and started her scans. He’d already told her to change the set up three times as the work progressed and she was amazed at how much he knew.

“This is so much better,” she exclaimed as she made another adjustment, “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner.”

“You did though,” Tomos replied with a smile, “I’ve watched you do this dozens of times now, and each time it gets just that little bit faster to set up, and we get that little bit further on with solving the puzzle.”

Tosh shook her head, “I have to admit I’m having a little trouble with the whole concept of you living the same day over and over.” She looked over at him as she finally turned on the containment field, followed by the scanner. “There, all we have to do now is wait.”

Tomos shook his head, “No, there’s something else we need to do whilst we wait. We need to study the CCTV footage of what happened in here this morning when Jack was examining the cube. There’s something you need to see.”

“Ok then,” Tosh assented, “Lets go have a look!”

With a few taps on her keyboard Tosh brought up the footage of the mornings’ incident, and she and Tomos watched quietly as Jack carefully examined the cube from all angles, and then pulled out one of the alien scanning devices that they regularly used to analyse the bits and pieces of alien technology that fell through the Rift. He slowly started moving it over and around the cube, carefully scanning every side from all different angles.

Suddenly the screen blurred and went fuzzy, and then just as Tosh was trying to clear the interference the bright beam of white light shot of the top of the box and pierced the roof of the little room.

“Well,” Tosh said in a surprised and slightly miffed tone of voice, “that wasn’t really very useful was it?” She rewound the tape and watched it again, “Whatever Jack did to it has caused so much interference that we can’t see what it was that he did!”

Tomos gave a rueful shake of his head, “I’ve lost count of the times I’ve watched you try to clean that up; it just isn’t worth it Tosh. There is something else you should see though. Can you bring up the footage from the highest camera you have out in the main Hub?”

“Sure,” Tosh said, and pushed a few buttons, quickly bringing up the feed from the relevant camera, and starting it playing. The both watched as Myfanwy glided smoothly around the upper area of the Hub, winging her way freely from one side to the other. Suddenly, the beam of light that emanated from the cube pierced her right through the centre of her body, and with a startled flap of wings, and presumable a loud screech, she flew straight back to her nest.

“Oh my…” Tosh murmured in surprised shock, “Myfanwy got hit by it too? You mean she’s been going through this as well?” she stared at Tomos in wide-eyed shock as he nodded confirmation at her. “Well I suppose that explains why she didn’t come down when Ianto tried to feed her after we finished the meeting.”

“I don’t know what affect this is having on her but I can’t imagine she’s enjoying it any more than I am.” Tomos said wryly. “The sooner we get this sorted out, the better.”

Just then Tosh’s computer beeped and a small window popped up in the corner of the screen.

“Oh look, the analysis programme has finished running, lets have a look at it shall we?” Tosh tapped away at her keyboard and within seconds each of her screens showed a different angle of the cube - the strange markings that had appeared showing clearly on four of the six sides.

Tosh isolated a section and magnified it until they could see the symbols clearly on the screen in front of her.

She studied them quietly for a minute or two whilst Tomos waited patiently, and then turned and looked at him.

“Well, I’m guessing this is where you come in,” she said, “as I’ve never seen anything like this before. What have we got?”

He shifted in his chair as he leaned over and pulled a piece of blank paper and pencil towards himself, and started scribbling, talking as he did so.

“It took three days to identify the markings originally,” he said as his pencil moved purposely across the paper. “and then Ianto and I spent hours in the archives looking for something that would give us more clues. Eventually we found this incredibly old book, which led us to believe that the markings on the cube are related to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The hieroglyphs and the markings on the cube are probably both descended from the same base language, which was most likely brought to Earth by Rigellian nomads some 7000 years ago, which outdates Egypt by nearly 2000 years.”

Tosh watched as his pencil continued to move across the paper, but she couldn’t make out exactly what he was doing yet.

“So, we think that this version is from about 4000 years in our future, but of course that’s only a guess. Anyway, you copied everything into your translating programme, which you managed to link with a couple of large databases of hieroglyphs, and from that we found seven symbols that we could be fairly confident translated correctly.” He paused for a moment… “Seven out of over 1000 symbols on the cube, in over 200 different arrangements formed from 68 unique characters.”

Tosh interrupted, “That’s not very many though, considering there are over 6000 different hieroglyphs known to us.”

“True,” Tomos replied, “but there are only 26 letters in the English alphabet, and look how many words they can spell out.”

“Ah, you have a very legitimate point there.” Tosh conceded. “So, what do we do next?”

“Hang on, you’re getting ahead of yourself now,” Tomos warned jokingly, “lets get to the next translating programme first.”

“So, we had 7 symbols we could figure out, 61 that we couldn’t, and myriads of arrangements. So you input everything we had into your alien languages translation programme and let that chew on them for a several hours. After doing that for a few days we got another 15 symbols, so we were doing better but still not enough to figure out the mystery box.”

“No wonder it’s taken so long to figure this out,” Tosh sighed, “only 22 symbols out of 68. It would take months, possibly even years to figure it out that way.”

“Well, it certainly feels like it’s been months or years,” Tomos stretched, “but the good news is that we did find someone who could help… but they’re not with Torchwood. They’re not even British.”

 

~x~x~

 

Gwen and Owen pulled up outside the house that was the location of the most recent Rift activity and rapidly exited the vehicle.

“Do you really think there’s anything here?” Owen griped as they walked up the pathway to the front door. “I mean, it all sounds a bit far fetched if you ask me, living the same day over and over and over again.”

Gwen just shook her head in disbelief at the doctors’ attitude and knocked on the front door. “If Jack believes him then I believe him. Anyway, Jack’s been in a time loop, remember, with Captain John?” Just then the door opened and a woman in her mid twenties appeared. “Oh good morning, I’m Gwen Cooper, Special Ops, we’ve had a report of a disturbance in the area and just need to check your house and yard.”

“Have you got ID??” the young woman asked with an undertone of suspicion in her voice.

“Of course.” Gwen smiled politely as she pulled out a small flip folder and quickly showed it to her. The woman nodded, “Thanks for that, I’m Louisa.” and moved aside to let them in. She shut the door after them and then led them through the house towards the backyard. As they walked up the hallway Owen grabbed Gwen’s arm and hissed in her ear, “How come you’ve got Jack’s psychic paper? He doesn’t let anyone have that!”

Gwen just smiled as they followed Louisa out to the backyard, “Thanks, we’ll let you know if we need anything.” She said as they went down the steps, leaving Louisa standing in the back doorway.

“Come on Owen, start looking, it shouldn’t be too hard to find a box full of toys.”

They spent the next ten minutes searching the overgrown back yard, until finally Gwen found an unusual looking box in the bottom corner of the yard, hidden beneath an overgrown hydrangea bush. She quickly ran a scanner over it, and once she’d determined that opening it wouldn’t be dangerous to her health, she did so.

“Wow!” Owen had come up behind her and was now peering over her shoulder. “Those are the strangest Disney toys I’ve ever seen!”

Gwen carefully lifted one of the items out, and after a quick look, flicked a switch. “Still got your Buzz though Owen.” She grinned, and then turned it off and shoved it back in the box before closing it all up again. “Right, lets get this back to the Hub and see how Tosh is doing with our young man and his cube.”

 

~x~x~

 

Tosh was studying the results of the molecular scan she’d run on the cube whilst she waited for Tomos to finish writing out his transcript of the cubes’ writings. As she read the report she started to feel more and more excited, and as she reached the end she got up and went looking for Jack.

“Jack, I’ve got something!” Tosh raced up the stairs to where Jack and Ianto were standing on the landing deep in conversation. “Come to the conference room, you’re going to love what I’ve found!”

A few minutes later Tosh was showing the two men a diagram on the main screen in the conference room.

“I’ve just finished the molecular scan of the cube, and really, it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever come across!” she pointed at the screen, “See here? The cube is an amalgam of a chronoton derivative combined with a mithril alloy. It’s incredibly strong, impervious to almost any form of destructive power. Its power source is a miniature naquadah generator, far beyond anything our technology could create, and it also seems to contain small amounts of timinite. Basically, it’s been built AND designed to create time loops. For what purpose however, I haven’t got a clue.”

“How are you going with the translation?” Jack asked as he examined the diagram carefully. “Any luck?”

Tosh cocked her head to one side and grimaced slightly. “It’s turned out to be a lot more difficult that expected. The symbols seem to be a form of Egyptian hieroglyphs, but my programme can’t translate them. Tomos says whilst the symbols match those found here on Earth they have different meanings on the cube. He’s currently writing me a transcript of what he remembers from previous loops, a lot of which he got from a professor in linguistics and archaeology from American.”

“An American? Who could translate our cube? Who the hell is this person and why isn’t he working for Torchwood?” Jack said offhandedly as he turned away from the screen and looked at Tosh.

“Because he works for the Stargate program.” Tosh replied, enjoying the stunned look on Jack’s face as that little titbit of information hit his brain.

“The Stargate program? We’ve never been able to prove its existence…”

“Don’t worry, they didn’t know about us either… and still won’t, as Tomos says he’s gotten everything he can from this Dr Jackson so won’t need to contact him again.” Tosh reassured him.

Jack looked at Tosh, “How exactly did Tomos find this guy anyway?”

“He did a search on the internet…” Tosh watched the various emotions pass over Jack’s face – confusion, disbelief… “Alright, I’m only kidding… look, it took both of us a couple of weeks to track him down…” she conceded, “apparently, all the information about him on the internet is at least 10 years old, really it was quite an effort to find more recent information.” She paused. “Or so Tomos says…” Tosh sighed, “It really is quite frustrating to be told about all this hard work I’ve done and not remember doing any of it!”

Jack smiled and patted Tosh gently on the shoulder. “You’re doing great. Just figure out how to turn that thing off and then we’ll go from there, ok?”

 

~x~x~

 

Tosh watched as Tomos made a few final strokes with his pencil and then showed her the piece of paper.

“What’s that?” she asked as she studied it, trying to make sense of it all.

“This is what the cube says… but for some bizarre reason the translation comes out in something that looks a lot like Latin, but isn’t.”

“That’s 61st century Latin!” Jack exclaimed as he appeared behind them and leaned over Tomos shoulder to have a look.  
  
Tosh looked at him, “61st century Latin?”

Jack nodded, “Latin. A bit odd eh? A language that’s reduced to the study of scholars and students in our time returns to common use in 4000 years time and becomes an intergalactic standard – everyone speaks and reads it, as well as their native languages of course.”

“But why all the hieroglyphs then?” Tomos asked.

Jack shrugged, “Maybe that was the local language?” he mused.  
  
”Or somebody thought it was a good way to keep their secrets whilst keeping it in full view of everyone.” Tosh stated as Jack nodded thoughtfully, and left them to it.

“Well, whatever the reason was, it’s the only translation left now, once we get this, hopefully we’ll figure out how to turn the bloody thing off!” Tomos declared in a voice laced with frustration, annoyance and hope.

“Well then,” Tosh said, “That I can do easily!”

She turned to her computer and with a quick series of keystrokes brought up her ancient languages translation programme. “Right,” she said as she moved out of Tomos’s way, “you’ll need to scan it in over here,” she pointed to a small gizmo on one side of her desk, “then use the import function here, and then just click on the ‘Go’ tab and we’ll have it!”

Tomos started scanning whilst Tosh went to report their progress to Jack.

Half an hour later Tomos finished scanning in the 61st century Latin translation, saved everything twice to make sure he wouldn’t lose any of it, and then clicked the ‘Go’ tab. He fidgeted impatiently for several minutes until the translation was finished, and then he printed off several copies before going to find Tosh and Jack. A quick glance through the printout had him laughing in disbelief. Wait until they read this!!

 

~x~x~

 

**WARNING:**

To be used under teacher supervision only. Unauthorised use will be reported to the principal and the culprit will be disciplined.

 

**INSTRUCTIONS:**

To use, set time period required, using the numerical symbols on Face #4 of the cube.

NOTE: Maximum time period is 2 weeks; default period is 24 hours.

For use by one person, pass the activator over the top Face and Face #1 of the cube.

For use by two people, pass the activator over the top Face and Face #2 of the cube.

For use by three or more people, pass the activator over the top Face, input the number of users and then pass the activator over Face #3 of the cube.

To turn off, pass the activator over the top Face and Face #5 of the cube.

 

**IMPORTANT INFORMATON:**

It is recommended that the number of time loops experienced in any one use be limited to 100 or less.

Some users may experience headaches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and/or severe muscle cramps when using the machine. If you experience any of these symptoms please discontinue use immediately and report to the campus clinic.

The cube MUST be returned to storage in the library immediately after use.

 

~x~x~

 

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the Torchwood Weekly Writing Challenge at http://torchwoodaustralia.com/forum under the name Obsessed, in 2008.
> 
> All the fics I'll be putting up are also on FanFiction.net but are no longer archived at the TWA.  
> This is the last of the fics I did for the TWWC.


End file.
